Quality Of New Hires and Recent Grads 44

[Wolves1]

I was hoping I could get some feedback from some of my fellow civil engineers on this board. I am an engineer working for a small firm. I have grown as an engineer over the years and have been fortunate enough to be able to aid in the hiring process for our firm. What I have come to notice is that the quality of new hires/recent grads have been less than desirable. I'm not saying that they aren't bright or not motivated because they are. However, in my humble opinion colleges today are just not doing a good job preparing these graduates for the work force. And I don't think this is anything new. I didn't feel particularly prepared for the work force when I graduated either and I had a leg up on most of my classmates. I was a second generation engineer and worked through college at an engineering firm.

In most cases the new graduate lacks the following skills.

[ul]
[li]Limited if any CAD skills[/li]
[li]Lacks practical knowledge of most types of design[/li]
[li]Does not have a good grasp of the design process[/li]
[/ul]

Again, I don't want to seem like I"m coming down hard on these people as I was probably in a similar state when I first graduated. From talking with my family (many of whom are engineers) this just seems to be the norm and has been this way for many years. In our case it seems like we have to spend 1-3 years training the person up to be an effective engineer for us.

With that being said, I would like to get hear some of your opinions on hiring new graduates for your firms. I realize we are in a small market and that could affect the talent pool, but in general I would be interested to hear what some of your experiences have been and if you have any solutions that helped you train your employees.

Also, is there anything in particular you do to reduce training costs and get them up to speed quicker? Do you have a specific training program for new hires? etc.

Thanks in advance for your advice! It is greatly appreciated!

 

[BUGGAR]

I'm embarrassed to say how stupid I was on my first job.

 

[mtu1972]

In the spring of 1969 during my Freshman year, we took what had been a "drafting" class. It was explained to us the world had changed and that Engineers no longer draft, so we were going to be taught how to provide sketches to the Drafters. We were the first class to experience this curriculum revision.

As a 3rd generation Civil Engineer I got my chops busted by Dad, two uncles, and Grandpa because I needed to learn drafting. And those conversations were mild compared to when they found out that Summer Surveying had been reduced from 11 weeks to just 3 weeks.

Then, my 1st assignment on my 1st job, with a small Structural Consulting firm, was to draw precast concrete shop drawings. My supervisor had drafted until he passed the PE exam. Fortunately we had real design jobs as well, so I did start learning engineering after that precast job was done.

In a career that spanned 40 years with seven companies, I did some drafting at 5 of the 7 jobs; including having to learn CAD at the 4th location.

I could never pretend to compete with the truly skilled Drafters, but at crunch time when the design is done and all that is left is getting the drawings out, helping out was not beneath me.

gjc

 

[JohnRBaker]

While in school I worked summers as a mechanical draftsman (this was in the pre-CAD days of the mid- to late-60's) where I learned the ropes as I never had any formal classroom training, neither in high school nor college. And while I still had to make some of my own drawings at times, when I started work as a full-time design engineer after graduation, I had already proven myself with respect to my 'drafting' skills.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[beej67]

I'm one of the fastest and most capable cad drafters I know, and I didn't learn a lick of it in school. Learned it all on the job.



Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[moltenmetal]

Wolves1: look for kids coming out of co-op universities. Their previous work term employers will have taught them some of the things you want them to know.

Better still, hire some co op students and train them. Pick the best ones and hire them. That's how we've grown our engineering group over the past decade. We never experience shortages, and I'd like to think we've also helped improve the quality of the crop of young engineers in our market significantly too.

Stop expecting others to do your work for you. Schools should teach them fundamentals- and while a little CAD is probably in there, lots of other stuff essential to working as an engineer isn't, can't, and never will be. It's the duty of experienced engineers to train and mentor the next crop. Businesses forgot that for a long time, and need to learn it again!

 

[oldestguy]

Having taught a civil engineering grad course to fill in for an instructor who never showed up (not a professor), after I was age 60, I was amazed at the attitude of the graduate engineers, mostly not of USA homeland. Their main aim seemed to be get high marks, not learn anything practical. The were stumped if I gave them a homework problem that was not solvable by "going to the book". The library as a tool or professional engineer society publications never entered their minds. The field trips I took them out on were the first they ever experienced. In summary, it would seem these students would be much better served if the univ would only hire engineer professors who had several years of work experience before being hired.

Hey Ron, right on.

 

[Triangled]

I've hired 5 grads in the last several years and by and large I'm pleased with their intellect, drive and teachability. Each one of them wishes they had received more practical guidance in university, but so do I.

 

[MacGyverS2000]

As a programmer (and often a part-time hiring manager), a small part of me died when I saw the latest generation of hires coming in with absolutely zero background in the C language. They knew Java, but that was useless for over 90% of the jobs I've held/hired for. A number of schools have completely removed that language from their curriculum, instead choosing to concentrate on the algorithms, theory, etc. Sounds great, until you realize the grads have no idea how to program in the real world. We move with the times...

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[drawoh]

MacGyverS2000,

What language were they programming in? I thought C was the basis for just about all modern programming.

I am on a couple of computer mailing lists, and I observe that computer languages are like women's hemlines. The current, fashionable language keep changing.

--
JHG

 

[MacGyverS2000]

Java was the major language of choice, though some others trickled in. Python was the major "scripting" language used by all, which is fine, but the core language varied quite a bit with Java being the top contender... it has been years since I've heard a student tell me C was a required language in their curriculum. Not even C++ or C# (and one would think with how Microsoft loves throwing its free compilers towards students in the classroom, C# would come out on top... but no, Java).

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[Terratek]

Their is no way a university could offer enough specific design training to satisfy all the minutia of design that exists in the market place.

Gets a project designing a building in college - not qualified to design a comm tower after graduating
Gets a project designing a water delivery system in college - not qualified to design a drainage basin after graduating
etc, etc.

I think geotech is probably the most closely tied to the academia of all the civil disciplines since it is not codified and you just can't know how to be a consulting geotechnical engineer until you become one. Same should hold true for all the subsets in civil.

 

[MrHershey]

Been in the field for five years now. Our new hires for the most part have been fine, maybe we've just had tremendous luck. They're hungry and really want to do well, but are understandably raw. They're fresh out of college with typically zero real world experience, they're supposed to be raw. If you want someone who isn't raw and can be productive like someone with a couple years of experience then you need to hire (and pay for) someone with that experience. And if the employer takes away the safety net and puts them on jobs where they need to perform quickly and correctly the first time, they're going to fail. And that's not their fault or even necessarily their supervisor's fault, it's the employer's fault. It's not the fresh grad's fault for failing to meet bad expectations.

To be honest, we've had much better luck with fresh grads than we have with people with experience. You can mold fresh grads into what you need them to be. It takes time, but it can be done and if you invest that time you end up with someone who really knows what they're doing and both thinks and acts the way you'd like them to think and act. With experienced engineers they may be damaged goods by the time they even get to you. Since I started at my company we've hired at least fourteen other engineers fresh of college. Ten of them still work here and are all solid contributors. Of course contributions vary, but there are none that we flat can't count on. I don't think our success rate for experienced engineers in our field is even that high, let alone experienced engineers coming from other areas of structural engineering.

Going down the list:
- Limited if any CAD skills. My university taught CAD but it was nuts and bolts stuff. For engineers it was AutoCAD and Inventor. I think they've since incorporated some Revit. We learned to draw both by hand and on the computer and (perhaps most importantly) think in three dimensions and how to convey that in two dimensions. We did not learn to set up drawings. I had no clue what an xref was. I would call what I had 'limited if any CAD skills', especially since by the time I graduated with the master's I was four years removed from the course. I don't think my University should have spent any more time on it than they did. Doing a little is important to get the feet wet. Doing too much in an academic setting takes time away from more important things (not all of which is even engineering).
- Lacks practical knowledge of most types of design. I've seen this complaint a lot and my personal opinion is that a lot of it stems from wanting someone who can step right in and understand the code and the different building systems right away. The issue I have with that is college is about providing a base, not specifics. For instance, my degree is in Civil and Environmental Engineering. That's a huge field. When I get out I could be doing structural design of buildings, I could be actually constructing the buildings, I could be designing earth dams, I could be doing transportation planning, I could be designing airfield pavements, I could be designing storm drainage systems, I could be researching microbe dispersal in rivers. My department provides graduates to each of those functions. At my University you didn't choose your 'primary' area until junior year. So by the time each student pares that list down to one, college is half over. For my field (structural), once you pare that down they *still* don't know what you're doing. I could be doing structural design of buildings, could be doing structural design of bridges, could be doing structural design of more industrial structures (utility lines, transmission towers, pipelines, etc.). Hell, a lot of my professors had grants from NASA, I could be doing structural design of freaking spaceships. And each of the 'primaries' is like that. One degree conceivably covers them all and the University has to keep that in mind when designing the academic coursework. Individual employers know what they're looking for, but you're going to Universities that provide graduates to a ton of different employers with a ton of different needs/wants.
- Does not have a good grasp of the design process. They're new hires fresh out of college. They've never designed a real world project and gotten real world feedback in their entire life. I'm not sure why they would have a good grasp of the design process. They might know what it is. They may have practiced it in school, I know I did. But until you actually do it with real world consequences and real world clients breathing down your neck and real world contractors telling you none of your crap works while screaming about the schedule, it's never going to sink in. Some will catch on quicker than others, whether they're quick or just have a knack for it. Some will burn out (and as the employer it's your job to recognize that and combat it). But I'd be surprised if you found very many fresh grads who really understood the design process.

 

[tstructural]

Mr. Hershey - that was the best post yet.

We can't expect schools to send us 2 year engineers. And in my opinion - that is what the OP is looking for. Give them time and help them learn how to be an engineer. There is a reason why they don't qualify to sit for the engineering exams - no one is ready at that point. IMO California (and I'm sure there are others) needs to change their 1 year experience = 1 year of graduate school. No one should have a PE after just one year working in the industry. CRAZY!!!

 

[moltenmetal]

Beg to differ, but only a bit: kids graduating from a co-op university will have two years of work experience before you hire them. Pick the right ones and you'll be much further ahead. They may not be as seasoned and will not be as mature as engineers with two years of solid post-grad on the job experience that every employer somehow hopes to poach from others. That said, gaining relevant work experience while studying can be valuable in a superadditive way- it certainly was for me, and we find the same thing in the co-ops we ultimately hire. For one thing, you won't find too many of them that have a crisis related to "why did I choose engineering?" part way through their employment with you- those folks tend to figure that out during work terms and then seek other employment on graduation- or transfer out of the program entirely.

Some kids at non-co op universities are lucky with summer jobs- but six terms of required-for-credit work experience beats three terms of good luck (or nepotism!) 90% of the time.

 

[theonlynamenottaken]

I do see a marked decline in the potential of fresh grads. Now, as BrianPetersen touched on above its not about what universities are or aren't teaching them. I see it as an unavoidable sign of the times. The thing that seems to be missing from the younger generation is any hands-on experience. No, I don't expect you to come out of college having already significant design experience, or to know the software we use... I expect you to be interested enough in your discipline to have some personal, non-schooling related experience.

I asked the only rookie I'm working with right now during her interview, "What was the last fixit / buildit / modifyit project you did yourself?" She told me about building a stand to hold up a motorcycle while removing the wheels. I asked her to explain the process, from fabricating parts to assembly and her eyes lit up as she explained what she had done. Embedded within her explanation I could see spatial ability, problem-solving skills, and a basic understanding of how things go together. A rookie at a friend's firm recently said, "I became an engineer so I could make enough money to pay other people to work on things for me." That's the problem I see. The younger generation doesn't seem to get their hands dirty anymore due to:

- planned obsolescence: We as a society just throw things away and buy new ones instead of fixing or maintaining them.
- instant gratification vs delayed gratification: The internet has modified our expectations to no longer accommodate waiting for anything. Why build my own thingamajig when I can order one that'll be on my front porch in two days, and I can still get some gratification of watching someone make one on YouTube?
- over-protectiveness: You might end up on the news if you are irresponsible enough to let youngsters actually touch and use tools these days (sarcasm, but you get the point).
- technology dependence: Seems that everyone under ~30 years old only knows one way to solve any problem... a computer. This often leads to over-complicating problems, or at the very least an inability to simplify a problem for a cursory, first-pass hand calc.

I remember one of my mentors once saying that you simply can't engineer a practical and constructable timber building design if you've never swung a hammer or used a saw. That may be an oversimplification but it does contain some real wisdom. Co-op students will have often picked up some of this experience, as long as their co-op jobs didn't just have them sitting in a cubicle or in front of a copier all day.

 

[IRstuff]

"I expect you to be interested enough in your discipline to have some personal, non-schooling related experience."

Perhaps, this the outcome of the constant drumbeat "Go into STEM." Possibly too many people are going into engineering because that's where they think the good jobs are. And, possibly, the extra instructors needed to feed the extra engineering students are also not quite up to snuff.

TTFN
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[KENAT]

I think it predates the 'Go Into STEM' - or even common use of the term STEM - for a long time guidance counselors etc. have been encouraging folks good at maths & physics to go into engineering, regardless of if they had any real interest.

Some come to love, or at least appreciate it, other don't seem to and are the ones prating on here about how they wouldn't encourage anyone to become an engineer...

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[moltenmetal]

theonlynamenottaken: this is a very old problem, not a recent one. Only a very small percentage of the chemical engineering students I went to school with (several decades ago) had any meaningful hands-on experience prior to university. Most of them even dropped the high school shop classes as soon as they could. A great number of their parents were professionals- a lot of those parents were engineers. A lack of hands-on was just as prevalent amongst the boys as the girls.

Our university curriculum included zero meaningful hands-on work of the type you're talking about. But we did get two years of co-op work experience while we studied- and if you picked the right work experience, it was possible to develop some hands-on during that time. But in many cases, a kid could be grieved on the job by a union tradesman for merely picking up a wrench- so those kids hit the labour market grass-green in terms of understanding what it takes to build something that they've designed. The tendency to divorce design from fabrication has been a strong one in our profession for a long time, and the reputation of our profession has suffered as a result.

There were a few exceptions in our class, myself included- I grew up around repair and fabrication and had grease under my fingernails from an early age. There are still a few kids who are similarly fortunate- you can find them if you look hard enough. Kids who grew up on farms tend to have a much higher chance than those who grew up in cities, but that's not a firm rule.

Helicopter parenting has been a growing issue over the past few decades, but fortunately it's not universal. Concerns over liability, health and safety concerns, and a tendency to "stream" students into either an academic or technical curriculum, have all reinforced this weakness right from the first days of high school. And when your cut-off for admission to an engineering program is an average in the high 80s, the tendency to get classes consisting of mostly hands-off book-learners is even higher.

We actually try to teach some basic fab skills to our young engineers- and to some of the older ones too. Some of our tradesmen embrace this opportunity to share what they know, seeing the value to them (and to the company) of a greater appreciation of their skills- and needs- from the people who will ultimately be designing what they must construct. But others are more short sighted, or consider the whole exercise to be a joke. I'm interested in what others are doing in this regard too.

 

[1gibson]

Just from personal experience, I'd be hesitant to hire someone with super high grades, I'd ask a lot of common sense questions first. In my class working on the design project, those kids honestly didn't know which way to turn a wrench to tighten a bolt, so they ended up writing the reports, and sometimes justifying our work with calculations after the fact. Which actually can be a useful skill, but can also be dangerous without a good feel for whether or not something SHOULD be justified. Not the type of people I'd look to for a difficult yes/no decision. "Is it safe" or "will it work" can't be answered by someone who still starts every sentence with "ideally" or "if we assume that..."

 

[zdas04]

1gibson,
Generalities based on anecdotes are pretty scary. I spent 6 years as a mechanical operator in a nuclear power plant before I started college. After U.S. Navy Nuclear Power School, college was a joke and I missed a 4.0 overall GPA by a "B" in a "human factors in organization" class. The other nucs that I kept in touch with had similar experiences. All of the vets in my class in college outperformed the kids out of high school simply because of increased maturity and a better-established work ethic. Good grades are not a function of a lack of common sense, often they are a function of above average maturity and a willingness to work.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist